Chapter X.—Answer to the Objection of the Heathen, that It Was Not Right to Abandon the Customs of Their Fathers.

But you say it is not creditable to subvert the
customs handed down to us from our fathers. And why, then, do we not
still use our first nourishment, milk, to which our nurses accustomed
us from the time of our birth? Why do we increase or diminish our
patrimony, and not keep it exactly the same as we got it? Why do we
not still vomit on our parents’ breasts, or still do the things
for which, when infants, and nursed by our mothers, we were laughed
at, but have corrected ourselves, even if we did not fall in with
good instructors? Then, if excesses in the indulgence of the passions,
though pernicious and dangerous, yet are accompanied with pleasure, why
do we not in the conduct of life abandon that usage which is evil, and
provocative of passion, and godless, even should our fathers feel hurt,
and betake ourselves to the truth, and seek Him who is truly our Father,
rejecting custom as a deleterious drug? For of all that I have undertaken
to do, the task I now attempt is the noblest, viz., to demonstrate to you
how inimical this insane and most wretched custom is to godliness. For a
boon so great, the greatest ever given by God to the human race, would
never have been hated and rejected, had not you been carried away by
custom, and then shut your ears against us; and just as unmanageable
horses throw off the reins, and take the bit between their teeth, you
rush away from the arguments addressed to you, in your eager desire to
shake yourselves clear of us, who seek to guide the chariot of your life,
and, impelled by your folly, dash towards the precipices of destruction,
and regard the holy word of God as an accursed thing. The reward of your
choice, therefore, as described by Sophocles, follows:—

“The mind a blank, useless ears, vain thoughts.”

And you know not that, of all truths, this is
the truest, that the good and godly shall obtain the good reward,
inasmuch as they held goodness in high esteem; while, on the other
hand, the wicked shall receive meet punishment. For the author of evil,
torment has been prepared; and so the prophet Zecharias threatens him:
“He that hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee; lo, is not this a brand
plucked from the fire?”976976Zech. iii. 2. What an infatuated desire, then, for voluntary
death is this, rooted in men’s minds! Why do they flee to this fatal
brand, with which they shall be burned, when it is within their power to
live nobly according to God, and not according to custom? For God bestows
life freely; but evil custom, after our departure from this world, brings
on the sinner unavailing remorse with punishment. By sad experience,
even a child knows how superstition destroys and piety saves. Let any
of you look at those who minister before the idols, their hair matted,
their persons disgraced with filthy and tattered clothes; who never come
near a bath, and let their nails grow to an extraordinary length, like
wild beasts; many of them castrated, who show the idol’s temples to
be in reality graves or prisons. These appear to me to bewail the gods,
not to worship them, and their sufferings to be worthy of pity rather
than piety. And seeing these things, do you still continue blind, and
will you not look up to the Ruler of all, the Lord of the universe? And
will you not escape from those dungeons, and flee to the mercy that comes
down from heaven? For God, of His great love to man, comes to the help
of man, as the mother-bird flies to one of her young that has fallen out
of the nest; and if a serpent open its mouth to swallow the little bird,
“the mother flutters round, uttering cries of grief over her dear
progeny;”977977Iliad,
ii. 315. and God the Father seeks His creature, and heals
his transgression, and pursues the serpent, and recovers the young one,
and incites it to fly up to the nest.

Thus dogs that have strayed, track out their master
by the scent; and horses that have thrown their riders, come to their
master’s call if he but whistle. “The ox,” it is said,
“knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib; but Israel
hath not known Me.”978978Isa. i. 3. What, then, of the Lord? He remembers not our ill
desert; He still pities, He still urges us to repentance.

And I would ask you, if it does not appear to
you monstrous, that you men who are God’s handiwork, who have
received your souls from Him, and belong wholly to God, should be
subject to another master, and, what is more, serve the tyrant instead
of the rightful King—the evil one instead of the good? For,
in the name of truth, what man in his senses turns his back on good,
and attaches himself to evil? What, then, is he who flees from God to
consort with demons? Who, that may become a son of God, prefers to be
in bondage? Or who is he that pursues his way to Erebus, when it is in
his power to be a citizen of heaven, and to cultivate Paradise, and walk
about in heaven and partake of the tree of life and immortality, and,
cleaving his way through the sky in the track of the luminous cloud,
behold, like Elias, the rain of salvation? Some there are, who, like
worms wallowing in marshes and mud in the streams of pleasure, feed
on foolish and useless delights—swinish men. For swine, it is
said, like mud better than pure water; and, according to Democritus,
“doat upon dirt.”

Let us not then be enslaved or become swinish; but,
as true children of the light, let us raise our eyes and look on the
light, lest the Lord discover us to be spurious, as the sun does the
eagles. Let us therefore repent, and pass from ignorance to knowledge,
from foolishness to wisdom, from licentiousness to self-restraint,
from unrighteousness to righteousness, from godlessness to God. It is an
enterprise of noble daring to take our way to God; and the enjoyment of
many other good things is within the reach of the lovers of righteousness,
who pursue eternal life, specially those things to which God Himself
alludes, speaking by Isaiah: “There is an inheritance for those who
serve the Lord.”979979Isa. liv. 17. Noble
and desirable is this inheritance: not gold, not silver, not raiment,
which the moth assails, and things of earth which are assailed by
the robber, whose eye is dazzled by worldly wealth; but it is that
treasure of salvation to which we must hasten, by becoming lovers of
the Word. Thence praise-worthy works descend to us, and fly with us
on the wing of truth. This is the inheritance with which the eternal
covenant of God invests us, conveying the everlasting gift of grace;
and thus our loving Father—the true Father—ceases not to
exhort, admonish, train, love us. For He ceases not to save, and advises
the best course: “Become righteous,” says the Lord.980980Isa. liv. 17, where Sept. reads,
“ye shall be righteous.” Ye that thirst, come to
the water; and ye that have no money, come, and buy and drink without
money.981981Isa. lv. 1.
He invites to the laver, to salvation, to illumination, all but crying out
and saying, The land I give thee, and the sea, my child, and heaven too;
and all the living creatures in them I freely bestow upon thee. Only,
O child, thirst for thy Father; God shall be revealed to thee without
price; the truth is not made merchandise of. He gives thee all creatures
that fly and swim, and those on the land. These the Father has created
for thy thankful enjoyment. What the bastard, who is a son of perdition,
foredoomed to be the slave of mammon, has to buy for money, He assigns to
thee as thine own, even to His own son who loves the Father; for whose
sake He still works, and to whom alone He promises, saying, “The
land shall not be sold in perpetuity,” for it is not destined to
corruption. “For the whole land is mine;” and it is thine too,
if thou receive God. Wherefore the Scripture, as might have been expected,
proclaims good news to those who have believed. “The saints of the
Lord shall inherit the glory of God and His power.” What glory,
tell me, O blessed One, which “eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor
hath it entered into the heart of man;”9829821 Cor. ii. 9. and “they shall be glad
in the kingdom of their Lord for ever and ever! Amen.” You have,
O men, the divine promise of grace; you have heard, on the other hand,
the threatening of punishment: by these the Lord saves, teaching men by
fear and grace. Why do we delay? Why do we not shun the punishment? Why
do we not receive the free gift? Why, in fine, do we not choose the better
part, God instead of the evil one, and prefer wisdom to idolatry, and take
life in exchange for death? “Behold,” He says, “I have
set before your face death and life.”983983Deut. xxx. 15. The Lord tries you, that
“you may choose life.” He counsels you as a father to obey
God. “For if ye hear Me,” He says, “and be willing, ye
shall eat the good things of the land:”984984Isa. i. 19. this is the grace attached
to obedience. “But if ye obey Me not, and are unwilling, the
sword and fire shall devour you:”985985Isa. i. 20, xxxiii. 11. this is the penalty
of disobedience. For the mouth of the Lord—the law of truth, the
word of the Lord—hath spoken these things. Are you willing that I
should be your good counsellor? Well, do you hear. I, if possible, will
explain. You ought, O men, when reflecting on the Good, to have brought
forward a witness inborn and competent, viz., faith, which of itself,
and from its own resources, chooses at once what is best, instead of
occupying yourselves in painfully inquiring whether what is best ought
to be followed. For, allow me to tell you, you ought to doubt whether
you should get drunk, but you get drunk before reflecting on the matter;
and whether
199you ought to do an injury, but you do
injury with the utmost readiness. The only thing you make the subject
of question is, whether God should be worshipped, and whether this
wise God and Christ should be followed: and this you think requires
deliberation and doubt, and know not what is worthy of God. Have faith
in us, as you have in drunkenness, that you may be wise; have faith in
us, as you have in injury, that you may live. But if, acknowledging the
conspicuous trustworthiness of the virtues, you wish to trust them,
come and I will set before you in abundance, materials of persuasion
respecting the Word. But do you—for your ancestral customs, by
which your minds are preoccupied, divert you from the truth,—do
you now hear what is the real state of the case as follows.

And let not any shame of this name preoccupy you,
which does great harm to men, and seduces them from salvation. Let us
then openly strip for the contest, and nobly strive in the arena of
truth, the holy Word being the judge, and the Lord of the universe
prescribing the contest. For ’tis no insignificant prize, the
guerdon of immortality which is set before us. Pay no more regard,
then, if you are rated by some of the low rabble who lead the dance of
impiety, and are driven on to the same pit by their folly and insanity,
makers of idols and worshippers of stones. For these have dared to deify
men,—Alexander of Macedon, for example, whom they canonized as
the thirteenth god, whose pretensions Babylon confuted, which showed
him dead. I admire, therefore, the divine sophist. Theocritus was his
name. After Alexander’s death, Theocritus, holding up the vain
opinions entertained by men respecting the gods, to ridicule before his
fellow-citizens, said: “Men, keep up your hearts as long as you see
the gods dying sooner than men.” And, truly, he who worships gods
that are visible, and the promiscuous rabble of creatures begotten and
born, and attaches himself to them, is a far more wretched object than
the very demons. For God is by no manner of means unrighteous, as the
demons are, but in the very highest degree righteous; and nothing more
resembles God than one of us when he becomes righteous in the highest
possible degree:—

“Go into the way, the whole tribe of you handicrafts-men,

Who worship Jove’s fierce-eyed daughter,986986 Minerva. the working goddess,

With fans duly placed, fools that ye
are”—

fashioners of stones, and worshippers
of them. Let your Phidias, and Polycletus, and your Praxiteles and
Apelles too, come, and all that are engaged in mechanical arts, who, being
themselves of the earth, are workers of the earth. “For then,”
says a certain prophecy, “the affairs here turn out unfortunately,
when men put their trust in images.” Let the meaner artists,
too—for I will not stop calling—come. None of these ever made
a breathing image, or out of earth moulded soft flesh. Who liquefied
the marrow? or who solidified the bones? Who stretched the nerves? who
distended the veins? Who poured the blood into them? Or who spread the
skin? Who ever could have made eyes capable of seeing? Who breathed
spirit into the lifeless form? Who bestowed righteousness? Who promised
immortality? The Maker of the universe alone; the Great Artist and Father
has formed us, such a living image as man is. But your Olympian Jove, the
image of an image, greatly out of harmony with truth, is the senseless
work of Attic hands. For the image of God is His Word, the genuine Son
of Mind, the Divine Word, the archetypal light of light; and the image of
the Word is the true man, the mind which is in man, who is therefore said
to have been made “in the image and likeness of God,”987987Gen. i. 26. assimilated
to the Divine Word in the affections of the soul, and therefore rational;
but effigies sculptured in human form, the earthly image of that part
of man which is visible and earth-born, are but a perishable impress of
humanity, manifestly wide of the truth. That life, then, which is occupied
with so much earnestness about matter, seems to me to be nothing else
than full of insanity. And custom, which has made you taste bondage and
unreasonable care, is fostered by vain opinion; and ignorance, which has
proved to the human race the cause of unlawful rites and delusive shows,
and also of deadly plagues and hateful images, has, by devising many
shapes of demons, stamped on all that follow it the mark of long-continued
death. Receive, then, the water of the word; wash, ye polluted ones;
purify yourselves from custom, by sprinkling yourselves with the drops of
truth.988988 [Immersion was surely
the form of primitive baptism, but these words, if not a reference to that
sacrament, must recall Isa. lii. 15.] The pure must ascend to
heaven. Thou art a man, if we look to that which is most common to thee
and others—seek Him who created thee; thou art a son, if we look to
that which is thy peculiar prerogative—acknowledge thy Father. But
do you still continue in your sins, engrossed with pleasures? To whom
shall the Lord say, “Yours is the kingdom of heaven?” Yours,
whose choice is set on God, if you will; yours, if you will only believe,
and comply with the brief terms of the announcement; which the Ninevites
having obeyed, instead of the destruction they looked for, obtained a
signal deliverance. How, then,
200may I ascend to heaven, is it said? The
Lord is the way; a strait way, but leading from heaven, strait in truth,
but leading back to heaven, strait, despised on earth; broad, adored
in heaven.

Then, he that is uninstructed in the word, has
ignorance as the excuse of his error; but as for him into whose
ears instruction has been poured, and who deliberately maintains his
incredulity in his soul, the wiser he appears to be, the more harm will
his understanding do him; for he has his own sense as his accuser for
not having chosen the best part. For man has been otherwise constituted
by nature, so as to have fellowship with God. As, then, we do not compel
the horse to plough, or the bull to hunt, but set each animal to that
for which it is by nature fitted; so, placing our finger on what is
man’s peculiar and distinguishing characteristic above other
creatures, we invite him—born, as he is, for the contemplation of
heaven, and being, as he is, a truly heavenly plant—to the knowledge
of God, counselling him to furnish himself with what is his sufficient
provision for eternity, namely piety. Practise husbandry, we say, if you
are a husbandman; but while you till your fields, know God. Sail the sea,
you who are devoted to navigation, yet call the whilst on the heavenly
Pilot.989989 [This fine passage
will be recalled by what Clement afterward, in the Stromata,
says of prayer. Book vii. vol. ii. p. 432. Edin.] Has
knowledge taken hold of you while engaged in military service? Listen
to the commander, who orders what is right. As those, then, who have
been overpowered with sleep and drunkenness, do ye awake; and using
your eyes a little, consider what mean those stones which you worship,
and the expenditure you frivolously lavish on matter. Your means and
substance you squander on ignorance, even as you throw away your lives to
death, having found no other end of your vain hope than this. Not only
unable to pity yourselves, you are incapable even of yielding to the
persuasions of those who commiserate you; enslaved as you are to evil
custom, and, clinging to it voluntarily till your last breath, you are
hurried to destruction: “because light is come into the world,
and men have loved the darkness rather than the light,”990990John iii. 19. while
they could sweep away those hindrances to salvation, pride, and wealth,
and fear, repeating this poetic utterance:—

If you wish, then, to cast aside
these vain phantasies, and bid adieu to evil custom, say to vain
opinion:—

“Lying dreams, farewell; you were then nothing.”

For what, think you, O men, is the
Hermes of Typho, and that of Andocides, and that of Amyetus? Is it
not evident to all that they are stones, as is the veritable Hermes
himself? As the Halo is not a god, and as the Iris is not a god,
but are states of the atmosphere and of the clouds; and as, likewise,
a day is not a god, nor a year, nor time, which is made up of these,
so neither is sun nor moon, by which each of those mentioned above is
determined. Who, then, in his right senses, can imagine Correction,
and Punishment, and Justice, and Retribution to be gods? For neither the
Furies, nor the Fates, nor Destiny are gods, since neither Government,
nor Glory, nor Wealth are gods, which last [as Plutus] painters represent
as blind. But if you deify Modesty, and Love, and Venus, let these be
followed by Infamy, and Passion, and Beauty, and Intercourse. Therefore
Sleep and Death cannot reasonably any more be regarded as twin deities,
being merely changes which take place naturally in living creatures;
no more will you with propriety call Fortune, or Destiny, or the Fates
goddesses. And if Strife and Battle be not gods, no more are Ares and
Enyo. Still further, if the lightnings, and thunderbolts, and rains
are not gods, how can fire and water be gods? how can shooting stars
and comets, which are produced by atmospheric changes? He who calls
Fortune a god, let him also so call Action. If, then, none of these,
nor of the images formed by human hands, and destitute of feeling, is
held to be a God, while a providence exercised about us is evidently the
result of a divine power,992992
A translation in accordance with the Latin version would run thus:
“While a certain previous conception of divine power is nevertheless
discovered within us.” But adopting that in the text the argument
is: there is unquestionably a providence implying the exertion of divine
power. That power is not exercised by idols or heathen gods. The only
other alternative is, that it is exercised by the one self-existent
God. it remains only to acknowledge this, that He alone who
is truly God, only truly is and subsists. But those who are insensible
to this are like men who have drunk mandrake or some other drug. May
God grant that you may at length awake from this slumber, and know God;
and that neither Gold, nor Stone, nor Tree, nor Action, nor Suffering,
nor Disease, nor Fear, may appear in your eyes as a god. For there are,
in sooth, “on the fruitful earth thrice ten thousand” demons,
not immortal, nor indeed mortal; for they are not endowed with sensation,
so as to render them capable of death, but only things of wood and
stone, that hold despotic sway over men insulting and violating life
through the force of custom. “The earth is the Lord’s,” it is said, “and
the fulness thereof.”993993Ps. xxiv. 1; 1 Cor. x. 26, 28. Then why darest thou, while
luxuriating in the bounties of the Lord, to ignore the Sovereign
Ruler? “Leave my earth,” the Lord will say to thee.
“Touch not the water which I bestow. Partake not of the fruits of
the earth produced by my husbandry.”
201Give to God recompense for your
sustenance; acknowledge thy Master. Thou art God’s creature.
What belongs to Him, how can it with justice be alienated? For that
which is alienated, being deprived of the properties that belonged
to it, is also deprived of truth. For, after the fashion of Niobe,
or, to express myself more mystically, like the Hebrew woman called
by the ancients Lot’s wife, are ye not turned into a state of
insensibility? This woman, we have heard, was turned into stone for
her love of Sodom. And those who are godless, addicted to impiety,
hard-hearted and foolish, are Sodomites. Believe that these utterances
are addressed to you from God. For think not that stones, and stocks,
and birds, and serpents are sacred things, and men are not; but, on
the contrary, regard men as truly sacred,994994 [1 Pet. ii. 17. This appeal in behalf of the sanctity
of man as man, shows the workings of the apostolic precept.]
and take beasts and stones for what they are. For there are miserable
wretches of human kind, who consider that God utters His voice by the
raven and the jackdaw, but says nothing by man; and honour the raven as
a messenger of God. But the man of God, who croaks not, nor chatters, but
speaks rationally and instructs lovingly, alas, they persecute; and while
he is inviting them to cultivate righteousness, they try inhumanly to
slay him, neither welcoming the grace which comes from above, nor fearing
the penalty. For they believe not God, nor understand His power, whose
love to man is ineffable; and His hatred of evil is inconceivable. His
anger augments punishment against sin; His love bestows blessings on
repentance. It is the height of wretchedness to be deprived of the
help which comes from God. Hence this blindness of eyes and dulness of
hearing are more grievous than other inflictions of the evil one; for
the one deprives them of heavenly vision, the other robs them of divine
instruction. But ye, thus maimed as respects the truth, blind in mind,
deaf in understanding, are not grieved, are not pained, have had no
desire to see heaven and the Maker of heaven, nor, by fixing your choice
on salvation, have sought to hear the Creator of the universe, and to
learn of Him; for no hindrance stands in the way of him who is bent on
the knowledge of God. Neither childlessness, nor poverty, nor obscurity,
nor want, can hinder him who eagerly strives after the knowledge
of God; nor does any one who has conquered995995 The expression “conquered by brass or iron”
is borrowed from Homer (Il., viii. 534). Brass, or copper, and
iron were the metals of which arms were made. by brass or
iron the true wisdom for himself choose to exchange it, for it is vastly
preferred to everything else. Christ is able to save in every place.
For he that is fired with ardour and admiration for righteousness,
being the lover of One who needs nothing, needs himself but little,
having treasured up his bliss in nothing but himself and God, where is
neither moth,996996Matt. vi. 20,
21. robber, nor pirate, but the eternal Giver of good. With
justice, then, have you been compared to those serpents who shut
their ears against the charmers. For “their mind,” says
the Scripture, “is like the serpent, like the deaf adder, which
stoppeth her ear, and will not hear the voice of the charmers.”997997Ps. lviii. 4, 5. [It was supposed
that adders deafened themselves by laying one ear on the earth, and
closing the other with the tail.] But allow yourselves to
feel the influence of the charming strains of sanctity, and receive
that mild word of ours, and reject the deadly poison, that it may be
granted to you to divest yourselves as much as possible of destruction,
as they998998 “They”
seems to refer to sanctity and the word. have been divested of
old age. Hear me, and do not stop your ears; do not block up the avenues
of hearing, but lay to heart what is said. Excellent is the medicine
of immortality! Stop at length your grovelling reptile motions.999999Ps. lviii. 4, 5. [It was supposed
that adders deafened themselves by laying one ear on the earth, and
closing the other with the tail.] “For the enemies of
the Lord,” says Scripture, “shall lick the dust.”10001000Ps. lxxii. 9. Raise
your eyes from earth to the skies, look up to heaven, admire the sight,
cease watching with outstretched head the heel of the righteous, and
hindering the way of truth. Be wise and harmless. Perchance the Lord
will endow you with the wing of simplicity (for He has resolved to give
wings to those that are earth-born), that you may leave your holes and
dwell in heaven. Only let us with our whole heart repent, that we may
be able with our whole heart to contain God. “Trust in Him, all
ye assembled people; pour out all your hearts before Him.”10011001Ps. lxii. 8. He says
to those that have newly abandoned wickedness, “He pities them,
and fills them with righteousness.” Believe Him who is man and
God; believe, O man. Believe, O man, the living God, who suffered and is
adored. Believe, ye slaves,10021002
[The impact of the Gospel on the slavery and helotism of the
Pagans.] Him who died; believe, all ye of human kind, Him
who alone is God of all men. Believe, and receive salvation as your
reward. Seek God, and your soul shall live. He who seeks God is busying
himself about his own salvation. Hast thou found God?—then thou
hast life. Let us then seek, in order that we may live. The reward of
seeking is life with God. “Let all who seek Thee be glad and rejoice
in Thee; and let them say continually, God be magnified.”10031003Ps. lxx. 4. A noble
hymn of God is an immortal man, established in righteousness, in whom
the oracles of truth are engraved. For where but in a soul that is wise
can you write truth? where love? where reverence? where meekness? Those
who have had these divine
202characters impressed on them, ought, I
think, to regard wisdom as a fair port whence to embark, to whatever lot
in life they turn; and likewise to deem it the calm haven of salvation:
wisdom, by which those who have betaken themselves to the Father, have
proved good fathers to their children; and good parents to their sons,
those who have known the Son; and good husbands to their wives, those
who remember the Bridegroom; and good masters to their servants,10041004 [See above, p. 201, and below,
the command “thou shalt love thy neighbor.”]
those who have been redeemed from utter slavery. Oh, happier far the
beasts than men involved in error! who live in ignorance as you, but
do not counterfeit the truth. There are no tribes of flatterers among
them. Fishes have no superstition: the birds worship not a single image;
only they look with admiration on heaven, since, deprived as they are of
reason, they are unable to know God. So are you not ashamed for living
through so many periods of life in impiety, making yourselves more
irrational than irrational creatures? You were boys, then striplings,
then youths, then men, but never as yet were you good. If you have
respect for old age, be wise, now that you have reached life’s
sunset; and albeit at the close of life, acquire the knowledge of God,
that the end of life may to you prove the beginning of salvation. You
have become old in superstition; as young, enter on the practice of
piety. God regards you as innocent children. Let, then, the Athenian
follow the laws of Solon, and the Argive those of Phoroneus, and
the Spartan those of Lycurgus: but if thou enrol thyself as one of
God’s people, heaven is thy country, God thy lawgiver. And
what are the laws? “Thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not commit
adultery; thou shalt not seduce boys; thou shalt not steal; thou shalt
not bear false witness; thou shalt love the Lord thy God.”10051005Ex. xx. 13–16; Deut. vi.
5. And the complements of these are those laws of reason and
words of sanctity which are inscribed on men’s hearts: “Thou
shalt love thy neighbour as thyself; to him who strikes thee on the cheek,
present also the other;”10061006Luke vi. 29. “thou shalt not lust, for by lust alone thou
hast committed adultery.”10071007Matt. v. 28. How much better, therefore, is it for men from
the beginning not to wish to desire things forbidden, than to obtain their
desires! But ye are not able to endure the austerity of salvation; but as
we delight in sweet things, and prize them higher for the agreeableness
of the pleasure they yield, while, on the other hand, those bitter
things which are distasteful to the palate are curative and healing,
and the harshness of medicines strengthens people of weak stomach, thus
custom pleases and tickles; but custom pushes into the abyss, while truth
conducts to heaven. Harsh it is at first, but a good nurse of youth; and
it is at once the decorous place where the household maids and matrons
dwell together, and the sage council-chamber. Nor is it difficult to
approach, or impossible to attain, but is very near us in our very homes;
as Moses, endowed with all wisdom, says, while referring to it, it has
its abode in three departments of our constitution—in the hands,
the mouth, and the heart: a meet emblem this of truth, which is embraced
by these three things in all—will, action, speech. And be not afraid
lest the multitude of pleasing objects which rise before you withdraw you
from wisdom. You yourself will spontaneously surmount the frivolousness
of custom, as boys when they have become men throw aside their toys. For
with a celerity unsurpassable, and a benevolence to which we have ready
access, the divine power, casting its radiance on the earth, hath filled
the universe with the seed of salvation. For it was not without divine
care that so great a work was accomplished in so brief a space by the
Lord, who, though despised as to appearance, was in reality adored,
the expiator of sin, the Saviour, the clement, the Divine Word, He
that is truly most manifest Deity, He that is made equal to the Lord
of the universe; because He was His Son, and the Word was in God, not
disbelieved in by all when He was first preached, nor altogether unknown
when, assuming the character of man, and fashioning Himself in flesh,
He enacted the drama of human salvation: for He was a true champion and a
fellow-champion with the creature. And being communicated most speedily
to men, having dawned from His Father’s counsel quicker than the
sun, with the most perfect ease He made God shine on us. Whence He was
and what He was, He showed by what He taught and exhibited, manifesting
Himself as the Herald of the Covenant, the Reconciler, our Saviour, the
Word, the Fount of life, the Giver of peace, diffused over the whole face
of the earth; by whom, so to speak, the universe has already become an
ocean of blessings.10081008 [Good
will to men made emphatic. Slavery already modified, free-schools
established, and homes created. As soon as persecution ceased, we find the
Christian hospital. Forster ascribes the first foundation of this kind to
Ephraim Syrus. A friend refers me to his Mohammedanism Unveiled,
vol. i. p. 283.]

992
A translation in accordance with the Latin version would run thus:
“While a certain previous conception of divine power is nevertheless
discovered within us.” But adopting that in the text the argument
is: there is unquestionably a providence implying the exertion of divine
power. That power is not exercised by idols or heathen gods. The only
other alternative is, that it is exercised by the one self-existent
God.

1008 [Good
will to men made emphatic. Slavery already modified, free-schools
established, and homes created. As soon as persecution ceased, we find the
Christian hospital. Forster ascribes the first foundation of this kind to
Ephraim Syrus. A friend refers me to his Mohammedanism Unveiled,
vol. i. p. 283.]